


Before Me

by MASD_1138



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, DayFour, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Older Characters, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Promises, damereycreationsweek, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MASD_1138/pseuds/MASD_1138
Summary: Some promises are hard to keep, but Poe will try his best.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 14
Kudos: 29





	Before Me

**Author's Note:**

> Day four! Angst! Prompts: hurt/comfort,Ta’aburnee (Arabic) “A declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how unbearable it would be to live without them” 
> 
> So, yeah, angst! I hope you all like it!

It’s a warm day on Yavin 4, not too warm that you have to be inside, but just perfect enough so that the entire family can be together in the yard. 

The kids are running around the yard, chasing the droids while their parents are chatting. Everything is entirely peaceful just like it has been for the last 45 years. On the porch, under the shade sits Poe Dameron and Rey Dameron. The war took a lot from them, yet they still managed to make a life for themselves. 

Poe’s life of a pilot had taken a toll on his body, making it harder for him to move around freely and do tasks on his own. It doesn’t help that he is now seventy-eight years old and is still too stubborn to let anybody help him. 

Rey, even though she is thirteen years younger than her husband, looks older than her age. Turns out that giving away her Life Force, then dying and being resuscitated takes away a couple years of her life, but Rey wouldn’t change anything. What happened led her on this path, it showed her her place in the galaxy.

Their two children, Shara and Temmin grew up to be great people and both went and had children of their own, making sure that the family compound is never empty. 

It’s more than both of them imagined they could have.

“Rey?”

“Yes.” Rey slowly moves closer to him on the bench.

“Do you remember when we first arrived here?” 

“Of course I do.”

They were both messes, neither could sleep more than two hours before immediately freaking out. Rey had difficulty trusting anyone but Poe, even if Kes was probably one of the kindest soul she had met. Poe ran to his x-wing every time he heard or saw a ship fly over the farm. Rey never left without her lightsaber, a habit she still has even though she’s older.

It was rough, but they slowly made progress, got married and started to have what they would consider a normal life. 

“It was nice wasn’t it?” Poe asks, his voice thick with nostalgia and maybe a bit of pride.

“Don’t talk in the past tense,” Rey cuts him off. “We don’t do that.” 

“It’s okay, Rey.” He takes her hand and squeezes it softly. “We know it will happen one day.”

“Not you before me,” Rey whispers, turning her head slightly to look at him. “That’s not what we agreed.”

She’s talking about that deal they made, all those years ago when they were both still so high on love that it felt like nothing could go wrong. Rey made him promise that he wouldn’t die before her. That he wouldn’t leave her alone, not when she’d been abandoned so many times before. He said yes, joking that anyway he would follow her soon after, not knowing the impact of his words. But he said them and she remembered, that fundamental promise that kept fear at bay.

“You’ll be fine Rey, look at them.” He points to Shara, who’s currently feeding her own daughter some koyo. Temmin is running around with his own son on his shoulders. Even BB-8 is there, having a race with the younger kids. “We’ll always have them.”

“But that’s not what we said.” 

Poe doesn’t have the Force, but he doesn’t need it to feel the energy emitting from Rey. “It’s okay to be afraid, it’s part of all our life.”

“I’m not afraid of death Poe, I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it. I accept it.” There’s a moment of silence, a moment where they both think of Exegol. “I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I lose you.” Poe puts his arm around her shoulders and lets her put her head in the crook of his neck, but doesn’t say anything. “What if I fall to the Dark Side?”

“You won’t, you are too good Rey. Too good to even think that of yourself. I’ll still be there, somewhere in the Force with my dad and my mom. You’ll join us a few years later and we’ll be together again. It will be like we were never apart. Our new forever.” 

Rey feels a tear slip down her cheek and she doesn’t even try to stop it, not when she can see the ones trailing down Poe’s ones. “Why do you always know what to say?”

“I had to get wise at some point in my life right?,” Poe laughs, but ends up coughing. Both of their kids turn around ready to come help, but Poe just lifts his hand, telling them that he’s fine. “You didn’t answer my question.” Always stubborn, Poe still doesn’t take no for an answer.

What a big question it is too. Did they have a nice life? How do you even begin to answer that question. Most of her childhood was horrible, then she ended up in the middle of war and died. She did come back though, so maybe her real life started there and then. 

“Yes it was.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tomorrow will be a much happier fic!


End file.
